Press Materials

Cirque du Soleil

From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984,Cirque du Soleil is now a major Quebec-based organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has close to 4,000 employees, including 1,300 performing artists from close to 50 different countries. Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to more than 155 million spectators in more than 300 cities in over forty countries on six continents.

Biography

Philippe Leduc

Composer and Musical Director

Composer, arranger and conductor Philippe Leduc describes himself as a workaholic, and that is borne out by the sheer volume of his work. His compositions and arrangements have literally been part of the background music of daily life in Quebec since the early 1980s.

A graduate of the faculty of music at the Université de Montréal, Philippe composed the news theme for the television network Radio-Canada and the soundtrack music for innumerable other highly-rated TV shows, including the Cirque du Soleil production Solstrom.

Philippe has been in demand as a composer of advertising jingles for a wide variety of national and international accounts. But as prolific as he has been for commercial clients, he has always made time for his own compositions.

Philippe, who composed for the Cirque du Soleil television series Solstrom, describes his orchestral score for Corteo as "very visceral music," but he is quick to add that there are many ethereal passages and passionate moments, too.

"I started with the physical," he says. "There is a relationship between the movements of the performers and the music. In a very broad sense the music is operatic. I'm trying to stretch the musical spectrum at Cirque."

Philippe sees Corteo as a show full of contrasts and musical moods, from solo guitar to an imposing orchestral presence. "It's very beautiful at the end," he says, "but along the way it's funny too. There are surprises and laughter around every corner. There are medieval influences with ancient instruments and traces of the 1930s but it's all very current music."

In a first for Cirque du Soleil, the music will depend on a great deal of Improvisation. There are several "duels" between a virtuoso violinist and an expert accordionist which will be completely different for every performance.